• This week’s Social Capital Markets meeting, in San Francisco, will feature important ideas about how to improve philanthropy and how business investments can produce social and environmental benefits, writes Julia Moulden, author of We Are the New Radicals: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World, on the Huffington Post. The Chronicle will offer regular updates from the event on its Conference Notebook blog.

• International aid groups too often focus on the needs of donors rather than the needs of the poor overseas, writes a veteran aid worker who is the anonymous author of the Tales From the Hood...

After three years of writing one of the nonprofit world’s most popular blogs, Sean Stannard-Stockton is creating a new company to help wealthy donors with their giving — a venture that grew out of his online discussions.

Mr. Stannard-Stockton, who writes the Tactical Philanthropy blog and is also an opinion writer for The Chronicle, announced today that he has formed Tactical Philanthropy Advisers, in Burlingame, Calif.

The company will help families or individuals with at least $1-million in philanthropic assets. So far, he says, it has signed up four clients with roughly $35-million to award to charity.

Mr. Stannard-Stockton also has agreements with the Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Calvert Giving Fund, and Foundation Source to potentially create...

• Frustrated in the first year after Hurricane Katrina by what he calls an “uncertain and overly conventional response from the foundation world,” Tony Pipa, founder of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, writes on the Philanthopic blog that the subsequent three years have also provided “several instances of philanthropy at its best.”

• Matthew Bishop, an editor at the Economist magazine, argues on his Values blog that satire about philanthropy—in the form of a new television comedy called The Foundation—could be a good thing for foundations. Nathaniel Whittemore, director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern...

A new advertisement by Médecins Sans Frontières UK, the British arm of Doctors Without Borders, is generating controversy— and the charity is actively participating in the debate.

The stark ad, which began appearing in British movie theaters this month, was a deliberate effort to try something different in nonprofit marketing, the group writes on its Web site.

Several blogs are debating whether the video is exploitative or stereotypes Africa.

The charity’s Web editor has joined the conversations, welcoming the discussion about the ad. “Even if we find out it doesn’t ‘work,’ the experience for MSF of directly engaging with people (and visa versa) and...

A new study may refute charges that Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks promote “slacktivism,” writes Kristin Ivie on the blog Social Citizens.

The study by the National Conference on Citizenship found that young people who discussed civic causes on Facebook and other online networks were more likely to donate money or volunteer their time than those who were not.

Ms. Ivie, social-innovation program associate at the Case Foundation, says this “seems to refute arguments that social media is just encouraging slacktivism by allowing people to edit their avatar or join a Facebook group without really having engaged.”

She adds that, because “social citizens can be all ages,” “perhaps encouraging the use of social media for good by other...

Enough with all the new efforts to encourage people to volunteer, says Jayne Cravens, a nonprofit consultant and author of a volunteering guide. Noting that Mozilla, the software project, has organized a Mozilla Service Week in September, she writes on Jayne Blog:

“Like other please-go-out-and-volunteer events, all the publicity will probably lead to there being far more volunteers that want to help than assignments for them to do, leading once again to many disappointed, disillusioned potential volunteers—something we don’t need.” Instead, she says, how about some “let’s-help-nonprofits-have-the-resources-needed-to-involve-more-volunteers events”?

Ms....

• Newspapers nationwide are writing about charities facing tough economic times, but the articles frequently paint a simplistic picture, writes Elizabeth Clawson, former coordinator of communications and development at the National Council of Nonprofits, on her new blog, which examines how the news media look at the nonprofit world.

• Writing in the Huffington Post, Richard Walden, president of the international-relief group Operation USA, describes a private meeting between North Korean officials and aid groups.

• How can a charity appeal to foundations that don’t take...

People throughout the nonprofit world are paying tribute to Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died Tuesday night. Among them:

• Steven Waldman, editor of the religious Web site Beliefnet, highlights Senator Kennedy’s role in getting a bill passed to create AmeriCorps in 1993. Mr. Waldman wrote a book about that fight, The Bill. “I got to watch up close Kennedy’s extraordinary skill as a legislator,” he writes on The Huffington Post. “Far from being an ideologue, Kennedy was invariably the guy going for the deal.”

• Michael Brown, chief executive of City Year, an AmeriCorps program in Boston,

• To survive — and even expand — in the bad economy charities need to recruit “highly committed, talented, and generous board members,” says Alice Korngold, a nonprofit consultant, on her Fast Company blog.

• Small and midsize charities should utilize cloud computing — using the Internet to obtain software and hardware from a third-party provider like Google — because it can lower technology costs, help employees save time, and benefit the environment, writes Anna Jaeger, co-director of TechSoup Global’s effort to get more nonprofit groups to use environmentally friendly technology.

• Charities

Are you ready for a TV show that revels in the “dark side of generosity”?

Showcase, a Canadian cable channel, next month will premiere The Foundation, a half-hour comedy series that is a vicious satire of philanthropy.

It follows self-serving Michael Valmont-Selkirk, the head of a $300-million family foundation, as he bumbles through his job. In one episode he spends the night on the street to raise money for homeless people, but ends up buying alcohol for them and smoking crack cocaine.

With some foundation executives concerned that the NBC drama The Philanthropist didn’t portray charitable work in the best light, the new show will likely leave them speechless.

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